Sapa

High Street Station may not be the most salubrious place to hang around after darkness has fallen but, compared to a late-night outing at Hanoi's railway terminal, one of Swansea's least attractive areas is more shining beacon than eyesore.

Let's just say New York's Grand Central this is not. But here we are anyway waiting to catch the night train to Sapa, a mountain village in the far north of Vietnam close to the Chinese border. Having firstly encountered a problem with our taxi driver - he demands more money from us than the one agreed for trip from our hotel - we find the station teeming with locals and tourists.

Not only is the terminal itself chaotic, airless, and sweaty, the toilets are filthy and we then have to cross several rail tracks to find our train, humping our luggage with us.

Cue then for a scam where baggage 'helpers' arrive from nowhere, whisking our suitcases away from us as we struggle over the tracks and take charge of loading them onto the train. Once we have boarded our two 'helpers' - not railway staff - then demand their dong (Vietnamese currency) for having carried the bags when we hadn't asked them to in the first place. We are in our sleeper carriage and two of them are at the door looking as if they mean business. When we get our wallets out and give them what we think their 'services' are worth they start getting aggressive, jabbing their fingers towards other larger readies.

These snarling hustlers are not nice (not remotely like the genuinely lovely and charming Vietnamese people we have met on our travels), but we stick to our guns and insist that what we have given them is all they are getting. Frustrated, they eventually give up and disappear back into whatever holes they originally surfaced from.

Train eventually gets going and, after a couple of unpleasant incidents, we are not sorry to see the back of Hanoi Station. The journey takes eight-and-a-half hours. The train noisly grinds, bumps and swings its way northwards. It's pitch black, of course, and we try to settle down for the night in our carriage, but sleep is pretty nigh impossible, though we do catch a couple of fitfull hours.

We arrive literally at the end of the line at 5.20am at Lao Cai, a town straddling the Vietnam-China border and which is the gateway to an unique region of towering forested mountains reaching into the clouds, cascading rice fields, fertile river valleys and remote hill-tribe villages.

We are met by Don (we have arranged for a guide) and he takes us to a little local cafe for a breakfast of toast, jam and black tea. Don, a regular guy and full of smiles, and his driver will transfer us by car to Sapa later that afternoon.

First, though, we face a full day. Being tired doesn't enter the equation. Morning destination is the Coc Ly market high up in the mountains on a muddy brow overlooking a stunning mist-shrouded valley where the hill tribes (a heady and frothy mix of ethnic minority people) come to sell their wares.

The market is a riot of colour where young and old exotically dressed H'mong women strap babies to their backs, swathe them in shawls and blankets and carry them around all day as they go about their business of buying, selling and bartering.

The H'mong, who migrated from China in the 19th Century, have become one of the largest ethnic tribes in Vietnam. They live at high altitude, raising animals - cattle, water buffalo, horses and pigs - growing rice, and making medicine from plants. There are groups within the group too - the Black H'mong wear indigo-dyed costumes of linen skirts, aprons, fancy headgear and leggings, while the Flower H'mong are among the most colourful, draped in rainbow-hued heavily sequined traditional outifts and sporting silver bangles, necklaces, dangling earrings and bracelets galore.

These resilient and hardy women - many of them have been shepherding water buffalo and horses to the market from distant villages in the mountains since 1am - sell everything under the sun, while the more soberly-dressed menfolk haggle with each other over the price of animals. The market is not so much a souvenir-hunting affair - though there are scarves, clothes and embroidered ethnic fabrics for sale - rather a true experience of what life in the mountains is like among the H'mongs and other native groups such as the Dzao, Tay and Nung.

The sights, sounds and smells astound us. On all sides are food stalls with huge vats of bubbling broths and rice, fish large and small wriggling about in silver pans, table tops strewn with pigs heads and entrails, dead snakes of every description stuffed into medicine bottles and the local hooch (70% proof rice wine) for the men to neck once trading is over for the day.

We spend a couple of fascinating hours here before taking a scenic trip with Don and a local boatman down the Chay River. Surrounded by jungle-topped limestone peaks on all sides, we pass tiny villages and caves where families have lived in the past. After our hectic start to the day this proves very relaxing - so much so that, lulled by the soothing waters of the river and our relativley sleepless night, we are close to nodding off, as is Don, who admits to having stayed up into the early hours to watch a movie.

Boat docks at little village where John enjoys a cold beer and Chris a hot tea before meeting up with driver again and finally arriving in Sapa feeling sapped. Enjoy lunch at little cafe restaurant with open terrace, watching the H'mong trying to get tourists like ourselves to part with their money as they urge them to buy trinkets and handicrafts.

After a good night's sleep at our hotel we awake refreshed to find Sapa, an old French hill station which sits high on a plateau 5,000-feet above sea level, covered in dense fog. To us the village seems more Swiss-Austrian than Vietnamese, but that's before we see the tribesfolk appearing like ghosts out of a pea-souper London would have been proud of in Jack The Ripper's day. Reality check time, too. Swiss-Austrian? We are just a few miles from China, not Germany.

Over the next two days Don has plans for us - a couple of exciting treks to see some of the more remote villages around Sapa and meet some of the people who live there. As soon as you are on the streets a group of colourfully-dressed women and children buzz around you like bees at the honeypot, chattering 10 to the dozen - their English is excellent given that they are self-taught - and wanting to know where you are from and whether you are married, have children etc etc.

Despite being poor, they are all smiles and happy with their lot. The expectation, however, is that you buy something from them at the end - and we have no problem with that. The way we see it is that it contributes a little to their village, so off to go then.

Once out of Sapa we start descending along steep and muddy mountain footpaths and we leave the fog behind. Breath-taking vistas of vast swathes of rice paddy fields open out in front of us. They are like giant waterfalls tumbling down one after another from the heavens. Here we are well and truly off the beaten path, with the urban madness of Hanoi and its choking motorcycle traffic a million miles away.

After a couple of hours trekking and being helped down mud-caked hillsides by the local women and children (who are as sure-footed as mountain goats) Chris arrives in the rustic Black H'mong village of Lao Chai - John, troubled by a knee problem (an old war wound from footie days flares up), has headed back to the comfort of his Sapa base camp (warm and comfy hotel) by this time.

Chris, meanwhile, lunches with some of the the local tribesfolk before visiting a couple of little schools and is invited into the classrooms where she spends some time with the children at lessons and puts sweets into grateful and tiny hands as she leaves.

The hugely appealing kids sing and dance, while nearby the local women, skilled embroiders, weave and dye fabric, just as their ancestors have done for thousands of years before them. Chris returns exhausted from her visit to Lao Chai and the isolated Red Dzao outpost of Giang Ta Chai but thrilled that she has been able to see and take part in a way of life that has existed for centuries and which remains virtually unchanged today.

Trek No. 2 the following day is to the village of Cat Cat, which sits in the valley below the majestic Fansipan mountain - at 3,000-plus metres Vietnam's highest peak. John passes late fitness test (knee feeling much better after resting up) and assures Chris he is geared for this one.

Again it's a steep, but beautiful hike down hillside to valley hundreds of feet below, passing a lovely waterfall on the way. Stop to watch children making dams in the mud, a villager crouching down and plucking a chicken for dinner and also try to avoid getting in the way of men humping massive bamboo sticks, used as pipes for building, on their shoulders. John tries lifting one - and is staggered by the sheer weight of it. To the pencil-thin fit-as-fiddles locals carrying them appear a breeze.

We are doing a circular trek today. While the fog still hangs over Sapa like a damp grey blanket, the lower you descend into the valleys below the clearer everything becomes, and again we are rewarded with magical views both above and below us.

The mid-day sun is beating down relentlessly as we head back to Sapa and, despite the undoubted beauty around us, we find it a slog. We are both bathed in sweat and return to our hotel in time for a quick shower before saying our goodbyes to this sparsely populated area of mountains, paddies and rivers quite unlike anything we have come across on our travels.

We are leaving to catch the night train back to Hanoi and, from there, flying to Danang Airport in the heartland of the country. Our drive back down to Lao Cai is hugely memorable - and we are rendered virtually speechless by amazing views of rice terraces which unfold like one giant step after another at every twist and turn as our minibus wends it torturous way along a mountain pass with sheer drops to seeming oblivion on one side.

Our next stop promises more of the Orient's treasures at the ancient former trading port of Hoi An - now an Unesco World Heritage site. We are leaving one exotic tapestry of riches in the hope of finding another.